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Every year, we look forward to a great smartphone from every manufacturer, we really want to see a smartphone that will change the world again like the iPhone did a few years back. We are now in year 2014, a year where we start to see many affordable and powerful smartphones coming to the market. Samsung, the king of Android smartphone released the 5th generation of its flagship GALAXY S series and it has been with us for a few weeks, its time for a full review treatment on Samsung’s latest GALAXY S5.
Samsung GALAXY S5 Video Review
Samsung GALAXY S5 vs Xiaomi Mi3
Samsung GALAXY S5 vs Samsung GALAXY Note 3
Looks same and different, with powerful internals
Its kind of difficult to describe our first impressions on the GALAXY S5’s design, it simply looks the same as its predecessors but feels different at the same time.
The GALAXY S5 is still made out of plastic build quality, but Samsung did some great cosmetic changes on the flagship to make it look like a flagship, the front bezel of the phone no longer has the textured design you find on the GALAXY S4, and the back cover has been replaced by a perforated back cover instead of hyperglaze coating. While many of us are sick of looking at plastic phones from Samsung, the GALAXY S5 feels really solid on hand, combined with the perforated back cover, we are able to hold the phone firmly in our hand without slipping it easily.
One thing we still don’t understand is why Samsung still isn’t able to get rid of that protruding home button, it houses a fingerprint scanner underneath but we really just hate it being too sensitive in our pockets. Pressing the home button turns on the display, and you keep hearing the nasty S-Voice virtual assistant calling up.
As usual, the GALAXY S5 always packs the latest hardware internals that Samsung can source at the time of release.
Samsung GALAXY S5 Hardware Specifications
Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 Quad Core 2.5GHz
RAM/ROM: 2GB/16GB (expandable via MicroSD)
Display: 5.1″ Full HD (1920×1080) Super AMOLED
Camera: 16MP AF ISOCELL (Main), 2MP (Front)
Connectivity: WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, BT 4.0, NFC, IR Blaster
Features: IP67 Water and Dust Resistant, Heart Rate Sensor, Pedometer
Networks: LTE/HSPA+
Battery: 2800mAh, with Ultra Power Saving Mode
Display
Samsung’s SUPER AMOLED display shouldn’t be a stranger to anyone who uses or sees a Samsung smartphone, colors are vibrant with good viewing angles while maintaining an impressive level of power efficiency. The GALAXY S5 has its screen size increased to a mere 0.1 inches and has maintained the same display resolution, users with huge hands shouldn’t have issues using the phone one handed, touch responsive is also awesome which makes performing gestures and typing experience on the virtual keyboard enjoyable.
All new TouchWiz with flat design and new features
The phone runs on Android 4.4 KitKat with the latest iteration of TouchWiz, which now features a flatter design and new teal color scheme. Seriously, Samsung isn’t the only manufacturer pursuing a flat design in its user experience ever since the introduction of Apple’s iOS. Of course, we are not against it and definitely welcome that new look to Samsung’s software experience.
Samsung’s new TouchWiz not only just offer a new and refreshing look, it also has a few stuffs up its sleeve that enhances the phone’s experience. We love two features which is Toolbox and Private Mode, Toolbox lets you access five of your favorite apps from anywhere in the phone while Private Mode allows you to hide away multimedia contents and secure it with the phone’s fingerprint sensor. Check out our useful feature video down below to find our more about them.
Apart from having these new features, Samsung has introduced new operational methods in TouchWiz, such as a new way of arranging home screens, easy access to My Magazine a.k.a Flipboard, a cleaner and wider app drawer design, and a whole new settings page. Samsung has unfortunately removed features such as lockscreen shortcuts and widgets, which we can still find on older devices that runs on Android 4.4 KitKat.
Lastly, TouchWiz is still pretty heavy and uses a lot of memory resources, causing slowdowns at times on the user experience.
Download Booster, IP67 Water and Dust Resistant, Fitness and Security
When Samsung announced Download Booster on the GALAXY S5, which combines both mobile data and WiFi speeds to download files, we are simply awed and curious to know how the heck this amazing technology works when other manufacturers aren’t able to do so, and it certainly has a catch in using it. First, you’ll need to be connected to a WiFi network and locked on to LTE signal to use this feature. Second, the feature will only work when you’re downloading files more than 30MB. This feature may sound really practical when you’re on the go, but having such criterias to use this feature simply doesn’t make sense to us, as HSPA+ speeds are also fast enough to compensate WiFi speeds at times, why can’t Samsung be more lenient on this?
The GALAXY S5 is an IP67 certified water and dust resistant smartphone, , it is able to submerge in water up to 1M for 30 minutes, we realized something very weird with the phone’s speakers after taking it out of the water – it became SO soft and distorted until we thought that the speaker had water inside, in fact water has already gone into the speaker as the speaker grille doesn’t stop water from flowing in. The phone’s speaker returned to normal after sometime and if you open the back cover, you realize that the back is actually wet, which makes us think if the GALAXY S5 is truly water resistant.
Fitness is one of the focus on Samsung’s line of products this year, the GALAXY S5 features a heart rate sensor and built-in pedometer. We love how S-Health is able to help keep track our fitness activities, but the heart rate sensor and pedometer is simply a let down just like the company’s Gear smartwatches, the phone fails to detect our heart rate at times even if we put our finger on the sensor and the pedometer is calculating our steps even if we shake the phone a little, which isn’t a forgivable error given that Samsung aims to introduce the GALAXY S5 as a fitness companion.
Samsung is considered one of the pioneers in Android security and they continue to do so with the GALAXY S5 by introducing biometric security, users can register up to 3 finger prints and use it for making purchases on the Samsung App Store, authorizing Paypal payments, unlocking private contents and the phone. The finger print scanner on the phone isn’t the most precise device, you have to swipe your finger on the home button at a moderate speed, you can’t do it too fast, and we sometimes find that an issue when we wanted to do things faster.
Camera and Image Samples
Samsung has claimed that the GALAXY S5’s 16MP ISOCELL camera has the fastest autofocus speed in mobile photography at only 0.3ms, we find that claim valid as the phone tends to detect subjects really fast. While the camera is able to produce pictures with great color saturation and detail even in low light shots, we find it a trouble to stabilize the camera at times and needed to ensure very stable hands to avoid blur in photos. Check out our sample pictures down below.
The camera also supports 4K video recording, which should look great if you have a 4K display to view on, check out the video recording sample down below.
Benchmarks and Gaming
Remember BenchmarkBooster last year, which Samsung is one of the culprits that tends to boost its devices performance to have higher scores in benchmark apps. Unfortunately the GALAXY S5 doesn’t have an amazingly high score to WOW us this time, the phone scores 35090 points and 21967 points in Antutu and Quadrant respectively. When we put a comparison with the company’s GALAXY Note 3, the one year old phone with older hardware managed to outperform the GALAXY S5’s benchmark results, which tells us that the phone’s software is so badly optimized that even the latest Snapdragon CPU has issues handling it, but still we won’t judge the score as bad because it is still fairly high in today’s standards.
The Snapdragon 801 CPU is a minor upgrade from the Snapdragon 800 CPU, which has a higher CPU clock speed while maintaining the same Adreno 330 GPU, games run well on the GALAXY S5 with smooth frame rates and jaw dropping graphics quality which you can expect from a flagship Snapdragon CPU.
Battery Life and Call Quality
The GALAXY S5 got an extra 200mAh battery bump from its predecessor, on a moderate to heavy app usage on the phone, it managed to last us around 18-20 hours in a single charge, which is pretty reasonable considering we’ve been using it to connect with Bluetooth devices, receiving instant messages, push e-mail and web browsing.
Call quality on the GALAXY S5 is superb thanks to HD voice, our callers reported extremely crisp and clear volume from our end.
Verdict – A necessary improvement from the GALAXY S4
Samsung seems to start becoming like Apple, the company’s flagship doesn’t WOW us like it did a few years back, the phone is merely has its internals refreshed while having a similar set of features like its competitors. While the company has implemented the necessary changes on the GALAXY S5, the product feels as if it were rushed out of the labs without realizing what really needs to be improved. The GALAXY S5 is no doubt a huge improvement from the GALAXY S4 and remains a very capable smartphone as of today, it is still an iconic product that shouldn’t be overlooked at. The Samsung GALAXY S5 retails at RM2399, which is expensive considering its build quality and features, the flagship faces stiff competition and should be priced lower to attract customers.
The Good
+ Reasonable battery life
+ Great loudspeaker quality
+ Decent camera performance
+ Great call quality
+ IP67 water and dust resistant
+ Maintains a great set of proprietary features
+ Good security features
The Bad
– TouchWiz uses a lot of resource
– Download booster limited
– Fingerprint sensor not the best
– Disappointing fitness sensors
– Over sensitive home button
– Oudated hardware design
We rate the Samsung GALAXY S5 at 4 out of 5 stars.
